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Ask HN: Most interesting tech you built for just yourself?

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Re: Ask HN: Most interesting tech you built for just yourself?

#442

Post by intelVISA »

sriram_malhar wrote: post #149

My MIL is 93, and the only tech she can really deal with is turning on the radio and TV and changing channels. She is fond of music from old classics (from the 60's and earlier), so I hooked up a Raspberry PI with an FM transmitter and created her own private radio station. She tells me what songs she likes and I create different playlists that get broadcast on her station. It preserves the surprise element of radio,…

I love this, thx for sharing :)

Re: Ask HN: Most interesting tech you built for just yourself?

#443

Post by piercebot »

I made a safe-to-wake light for my son out of a Raspberry Pi. It serves up a responsive website on the local network so you can manually change the lights or update the schedule.

Been running like a champ for over 3 years now, which has been the most pleasant surprise. I'm used to ecosystem entropy causing things to break.

I documented my adventures in a 6-part series: https://ajpierce.com/2020-01-04_safe-to-wake-pt1/

Re: Ask HN: Most interesting tech you built for just yourself?

#444

Post by eigenhombre »

rpastuszak wrote: post #380

The most interesting tech I've build for myself is boring: a writing tool I use every day for journaling: https://enso.sonnet.io With that out of the way here's some more ridiculous stuff: In 2016, I made a browser based AR party game where you'd fight kittens falling from the sky by dancing with vegetables in your hands (CMYK was easier to track using the webcam). I have some photos here: https://goo.gl/photos/g6Dp8…

Enso looks really nice, as does Sit and your about pages.

Re: Ask HN: Most interesting tech you built for just yourself?

#447

Post by huhtenberg »

michaeltbuss wrote: post #435

Every night, at 3 AM, my cat will meow and paw at the bedroom door like a banshee. I tried everything to get him to stop, including the off-the-shelf air sprayers that trigger with motion. Eventually, I decided to build my own. I 3D printed a case and trigger for an air sprayer can, created some electronics with an ESP32 and RF trigger, and wrote my own "motion detection" logic - this time with an ultrasonic sensor,…

> ... meow and paw like a banshee.

Was this in March by any chance?

Re: Ask HN: Most interesting tech you built for just yourself?

#448

Post by dangond »

michaeltbuss wrote: post #435

Every night, at 3 AM, my cat will meow and paw at the bedroom door like a banshee. I tried everything to get him to stop, including the off-the-shelf air sprayers that trigger with motion. Eventually, I decided to build my own. I 3D printed a case and trigger for an air sprayer can, created some electronics with an ESP32 and RF trigger, and wrote my own "motion detection" logic - this time with an ultrasonic sensor,…

We were lucky enough that our cat seems to prefer screaming under the door rather than pawing at the door, and stuffing a blanket underneath thankfully caused her to simply give up.

She still attacks the door loudly when playing with her toys at 5 AM if we forget to confiscate them though...

Re: Ask HN: Most interesting tech you built for just yourself?

#449

Post by jokteur »

jo-m wrote: post #254

I have a rail line right under my apartment, so I built a small computer vision app running on a Rasperry Pi which records each train passing, and tries to stitch an image of it. It has a frontend at https://trains.jo-m.ch/ . Edit: it's currently raining and the rain drops are disturbing the images a bit.

Given the type of trains that are passing (it seems no IC/IR), along with their precise timing and direction, I'm sure it is easy to figure out where exactly you are living.
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